Windows, Open source and beyond

Signing Windows 7 x64 drivers

For security reasons, 64-bit versions of Windows Vista and newer require the drivers to be digitally signed to load. This strict driver signing policy leads to one of the following:

The driver must contain an embedded driver signature.

The driver must be distributed together with an INF file and a signed catalog file.

For development and test purposes, the signing requirement can be bypassed using several methods. This tutorial focus on using a test certificate and the Test Mode to install and load self-signed drivers.

Windows Test Mode

To activate Test Mode you need to start a command prompt with administrator rights then execute the following command (use off switch to disable it):

C:\Windows\system32> bcdedit /set testsigning on

Restart the computer for the change to take effect.

Upon reboot you will notice that the Test Mode watermark is present on the desktop. If you can’t stand seeing this watermark you can use Remove Watermarks to remove it. I highly recommend backing up the original user32.dll.mui file on your system before it gets patched.